Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2017 August 28

= August 28 =

About Draft:Where are my friends (nursery rhyme)
Hi WP:RD/L all, From what I can google up (and with my very limited Chinese), the lyrics to this song start with "一二三四五六七, 我的朋友在哪里..." and it appears to a somewhat ubiquitous children's song. What do think about this? 彼得 in 澳大利亚 aka --Shirt58 (talk) 10:32, 28 August 2017 (UTC)
 * I looked this up on Youtube. I don't recall ever having heard this song during my early childhood years in China. But it's been a while since then (late 80s/ early 90s). --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 09:42, 29 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Looking the lyrics up on Google Books, there seems to have been an essay called "There is a song" (有一首歌) by Xi Murong that has been used in exams in Taiwan, which recounts that in 1946 she was taught the song with lyrics as "One two three four five six seven, where are my friends? In Nanjing, in Shanghai - my friends are here". "一二三四五六七/我的朋友在哪里/在南京/在上海/我的朋友在这里". --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 14:07, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

Do right-to-left languages make writing easier for left-handers?
^ Or do left-handers of those languages (Hebrew, Arabic, etc.) have struggles of their own? 140.254.70.33 (talk) 12:45, 28 August 2017 (UTC)


 * Not directly apropos, but languages are not left-to-right, writing systems are. In particular, early Greek was written right-to-left (probably inheriting this from the Phoenician alphabet), and sometimes in Boustrophedon, before eventually settling (more or less) on left-to-right. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 14:29, 28 August 2017 (UTC)


 * If the ease of writing in one direction or the other is mainly due to not smudging the ink of what you've just written, then that would be mostly irrelevant for writing systems which were not commonly written using ink... AnonMoos (talk) 15:22, 28 August 2017 (UTC)


 * P.S. If most readers of a language are not fluently literate, and read very slowly, then boustrophedon is actually the easiest for them... AnonMoos (talk) 15:30, 28 August 2017 (UTC)
 * It's both ink smudging and also being able to read what you just wrote. In classical Chinese (which is written top to bottom, then right to left), both issues are made less of a problem because of the top-down approach, but the residual risk is mitigated because of the way one is supposed to hold the writing brush - i.e. with the wrist in the air and not on the table. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 09:16, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

Why do we have the letter X despite it not having a special sound??
Let me see if I got this right:

Our X comes from the Latin alphabet, where it already had the ks sound it has today. The Romans borrowed their X from Etruscan, where it also had this sound. How about in Greek?? In classical Greek, the letter chi had an aspirated k, similar to the k+h in "elk horn". (It clearly makes sense that Greek didn't have the sound of German ch at the time the alphabet was formed, because if it did, they probably would have used their descendant of the Phoenician letter cheth for this sound, but they didn't. Some early Greek variants used it for the consonant h, but classical Greek used it for the sound of English long a.) But in the archaic Western Greek alphabet, which the Etruscans got their alphabet from, chi represented k+s. Why?? I believe it was a simplification of the "chi plus sigma" combination. But why did they even want a single letter for the k+s combination?? Is there any reason?? Georgia guy (talk) 14:39, 28 August 2017 (UTC)


 * Although our letter "X" may look like the Greek "chi" it actually sounds like the Greek "xi" (written Ξ and ξ in upper and lower case respectively). Wymspen (talk) 14:57, 28 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Your statement is a description of the classical (or Eastern) Greek alphabet, not the archaic Western Greek alphabet that the Etruscans and Romans got their alphabet (including their letter X) from Georgia guy (talk) 14:59, 28 August 2017 (UTC)


 * Georgia_guy -- It seems quite likely that the earliest form of the Greek alphabet (as first adapted from Phoenician) would have ended at Ypsilon (see chart 27 in chapter 3 of The Early Alphabet by John F. Healey), and of course would have included the letters Digamma, San, and Qoppa. Various local Greek communities adjusted this earliest form of the alphabet in different ways to meet the needs of the Greek language (in each case their own particular form of the Greek language).  Some of those adjustments (such as adding the letter Phi and dropping the letters San and Qoppa) eventually became widely accepted across most of the literate Greek-speaking world, but others were not, leading to local alphabet variations.  And of course, those dialects which did not possess the sounds [w] and [h] had no need for the letters Digamma and Heta.  What we now call the "Classical" Greek alphabet is based on the Ionian form of the Greek alphabet adopted at Athens in 403 BC.  The Roman alphabet derives from the Etruscan alphabet, which derives from a Western Greek alphabet introduced to Italy through Cumae.  For whatever reason, those who developed several varieties of the early Greek alphabet thought it was desirable to have letters writing the sound combinations [ps] and/or [ks] (perhaps parallel to the letter Zeta, which probably represented [zd] and/or [dz] in various dialects of the time), and the Latin letter X is a remote legacy of this... AnonMoos (talk) 15:13, 28 August 2017 (UTC)


 * Oh, it must parallel zeta. So the next question is, why did zeta get used for dz or zd rather than delta+zeta or zeta+delta?? Georgia guy (talk) 15:17, 28 August 2017 (UTC)


 * Because in those dialects the sound [z] did not exist except as part of the [zd] or [dz] combination... AnonMoos (talk) 15:25, 28 August 2017 (UTC)


 * And the Greeks didn't recognize the sound as a double sound that includes a d as part of it?? Georgia guy (talk) 15:32, 28 August 2017 (UTC)
 * They did, at least by the time when they developed grammatical scholarship and theory. The ancient grammarians are quite explicit about Ξ,Ψ and Ζ being "double" consonants, and what segments they consisted of (although in the case of Ζ they remain curiously vague about the order of those segments, s+d or d+s). Of course this meta-linguistic insight may have had little to do with the initial decisions of those who developed the writing system centuries earlier. Fut.Perf. ☼ 15:39, 28 August 2017 (UTC)
 * So why couldn't they just use delta+sigma or sigma+delta?? Did they need something to do with the Phoenician zayin to make sure it is still useful in their alphabet?? Georgia guy (talk) 15:41, 28 August 2017 (UTC)


 * Georgia_guy -- By (late?) Hellenistic times, earlier [zd]/[dz] had become [z], now a separate phoneme, so the whole thing became moot. AnonMoos (talk) 15:49, 28 August 2017 (UTC)


 * Here's a summary of the Ancient Greek sources on the pronunciation of zeta at different times. Double sharp (talk) 23:54, 28 August 2017 (UTC)


 * Georgia_guy -- In various forms of Middle English, [ž] occurred only as part of the combination [dž], and there was absolutely no recognized or common orthographic method of writing the [ž] sound outside of a [dž] affricate, and the common methods of writing [dž] did not include the letter "d". (Only spellings for what was originally a doubled affricate [ddž], such as "dge" etc, included a letter "d".)  English didn't really develop a clear spelling for the [ž] sound standing alone until the 20th century ("zh"), and then mainly in response to the need to transliterate foreign languages... AnonMoos (talk) 15:45, 28 August 2017 (UTC)


 * About your initial question regarding the letter for /ks/, a pointer to the literature is here: . You'll notice that Woodard is describing its existence as "seemingly superfluous" and surprising, so there may indeed be no very clear and unambiguous answer to the "why" you wondered about. Fut.Perf. ☼ 15:55, 28 August 2017 (UTC)


 * P.S. In belated reply to part of your original posting, the Phoenician letter ח represented a voiceless pharyngeal sound, IPA [ħ], and it's by no means a priori clear that in a language contact situation it would have been automatically identified with an ordinary velar fricative, IPA [x]... AnonMoos (talk) 16:00, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

For an alternative, but highly interesting theory on the origin of the Greek letters phi, khi and psi, see Barry B. Powell: The Origin of the Puzzling Supplementals φ χ ψ (JSTOR). Cheers ✦  hugarheimur 16:16, 28 August 2017 (UTC)


 * You mean like xylophone, or Bexar County, Texas, or Xóchitl? -- Jayron 32 20:11, 28 August 2017 (UTC)


 * It might also be pointed out that Latin has very few final consonant clusters, but /ks/ is one of them: lex, rex, index, pontifex.  There is also /ps/ spelt "bs" as in urbs, but that is rarer.  There are also the Claudian letters. μηδείς (talk) 22:01, 31 August 2017 (UTC)


 * You forgot -ns, which is very common (though it's a contraction of -nts)... AnonMoos (talk) 04:52, 1 September 2017 (UTC)


 * I did not "forget" -ns, which is simply a derivational ending, rather than a nominal form of actual nouns with -g roots. But I have no problem with it. μηδείς (talk) 21:54, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

Chinese characters
Suppose that something is written in Chinese with Character A in the traditional form and with Character B in the simplified form.

1) Is Character A always, in all contexts, the traditional correlate of the simplified Character B, and vice versa?

2) Is there a reliable online service that identifies if a given character is traditional or simplified, and converts it to its simplified/traditional correlate?

--Heavetarim (talk) 19:15, 28 August 2017 (UTC)


 * This website may be useful. The link provides both traditional and simplified forms. You can also use Google Translate. As for the first question, I would say yes, but sometimes the traditional form and simplified form are one and the same. 140.254.70.33 (talk) 22:41, 28 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Neither is completely true, because some characters were merged during simplification: simplified 发 corresponds to both traditional 發 "distribute, become, depart, issue" and 髮 "hair", for example. Furthermore 后 exists in both simplified and traditional, but in the former it has also subsumed the function of 後. Double sharp (talk) 23:59, 28 August 2017 (UTC)
 * To OP's second question, some automatic converters work fairly well in context by referencing a database of phrases. For example, as Double sharp referred to, 后 in simplified means both "queen" and "back", whereas the two meanings are represented by different characters in traditional. The way an automatic converter will assess which traditional character it should be, is by looking at the context. This is of course not error free, especially if the sentence being constructed is short or unconventional. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 09:19, 29 August 2017 (UTC)


 * Chinese Wikipedia has some kind of conversion system which seems to work reasonably well (at least there seems to be less tension between traditional and simplified users there than between Brazilian Portuguese and European Portuguese speakers on Portuguese Wikipedia, as far as I can tell, speaking neither language). AnonMoos (talk) 05:26, 30 August 2017 (UTC)
 * On Chinese Wikipedia you sometimes need to add manual conversions. But the more significant source of tention is not about how one character converts into several, but when different regions use different words for the same thing. It doesn't help matters when a particular region has multiple usages, e.g. for foreign place names the Hong Kong government now uses the same translations as the mainland Chinese government, whereas most Hong Kong people still use different, traditional translations. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 13:37, 31 August 2017 (UTC)
 * No. The answer to the second question answers the first one too. Simplification doesn't mean the modification of every character. It's not about lumping characters together either. Both character sets should rather be regarded as different standardizations. There are also instances where the simplified version opted for a character with more strokes or created several characters. While 鍾 generally becomes 钟 in simplified Chinese, the character 锺 (only left side changed) for the surname was introduced in 2013. Therefore, converting traditional to simplified characters is not easier than vice versa. Although Google Translate can give you a first draft, it's highly unlikely that it's void of conversion mistakes due to different readings and meanings one character can have. --92.74.25.214 (talk) 05:57, 2 September 2017 (UTC)

What kind of (British?) accent is this?
You can listen to it, once you play the video. On one hand, he sounds a Brit (probably), having a native accent (certainly). On the other hand, it's sometimes rhotic, sometimes not, along with some other non-British features I'm not familiar with (but maybe I'm wrong). For example, listen mainly to the way he pronounces "to find OUT" at 0:00:15 moment, and "creatures" (rhotic?) at 0:00:17 moment. 185.46.78.7 (talk) 20:10, 28 August 2017 (UTC)
 * That's David Tennant so a Scottish accent from his background. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:13, 28 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Thankxs. 185.46.78.7 (talk) 07:32, 29 August 2017 (UTC)
 * And (since there are many easily distinguishable "Scottish" accents – even I as a Sassenach can identify Fife, Dundee, Edinburgh, Stirlingshire, Glaswegian and Western Isles accents fairly reliably) specifically a West Lothian accent (which is close to Edinburgh). {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.204.180.96 (talk) 21:15, 28 August 2017 (UTC)


 * What I meant was you could attempt to "work it out" from Tennant's heritage, upbringing etc, all of which contribue to the accent. The Rambling Man (talk) 21:20, 28 August 2017 (UTC)
 * I wasn't disagreeing, only being more specific, in part to counter the unconscious assumption by some non-Brits that there's only one Scottish accent. That the accent is, at first level, Scottish is surely completely obvious to anyone with any familiarity at all with British accents, let alone anyone who actually lives in the British Isles. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.2301.95} 90.204.180.96 (talk) 02:19, 29 August 2017 (UTC)
 * West Lothian? Interesting. Anyways, I loved the way he pronounced "to find OUT ", at 0:00:15. I Haven't heard it before, though. Is it typical of West Lothian accent? Or maybe of all Scottish accents? As far as I know, "Regular" Brits (e.g. near-RP speakers and likewise) don't pronounce it that way, do they? 185.46.76.35 (talk) 07:32, 29 August 2017 (UTC)
 * If you think that "Regular" Brits are anything like "near-RP speakers", you're very much mistaken. And you must remember that Tennant is what we Brits call "an actor", and so is given to unusual and inventive emphasis of all kinds. Martinevans123 (talk) 07:41, 29 August 2017 (UTC)
 * No, I didn't say that (what I called) "Regular" Brits speak like near-RP speakers, I said the opposite: Near-RP speakers speak like (what I called) "regular" Brits, i.e. they constitute an example (an example only) of what I called "regular" Brits. Just like the relation between being a Frenchman and being a person: Not every person is a Frenchman, yet every Frenchman is a person (even though the Frenchmen constitute a minority only, among the people of the world). Anyways, I've always been quite aware of the fact, that near-RP speakers constitute a minority only, among the Brits. However, they are still (what I called) "regular" Brits, in that they never pronounce "find OUT" the way he pronounces it, do they? As for your last comment: Ok, got it, thank you. However, do you know of other Brits who pronounce "find out" as he does (at 0:00:15 )? 185.46.76.35 (talk) 08:04, 29 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Ah ok, fine. Yes, we don't all talk like Jacob Rees-Mogg ("wiv plums in 'is mouth", as Ali G might say). But I was suggesting that the "to find OUT ", " is not really an regional accent thing, it's just a dramatic nature documentary voice-over thing. Martinevans123 (talk) 08:59, 29 August 2017 (UTC)
 * I think better to say English English or England English, RP being a subset of that. And despite having a great variety of accents this area still shares a lot of similarities which strikingly set it apart from other regions of the UK. Moreover, comprising more than 80% of the UK population many indeed consider English English as the "typical" or "regular" British English: and in a sense this notion is quite accurate. The other regions differ more from England than the accents within England among themselves. In your particular example >90% of Scotsmen pronounce the "ou" sound that way: either [] or, while few if any south of the border say that way. The same goes for "r": at least 3/4 of Scotsmen are rhotic speakers, even though for many speakers there is a tendency to omit "r"s, and the actual realization of "r" varies. In England rhotic accents are very actively becoming extinct with very few enclaves remaining (West Country in particular). A few such marked pronunciations combined and you cannot take a Scotsman for an Englishman, no matter from the North or the South, RP or non-RP. You haven't to look for it for long, just listen to any Scotsman, e.g. in any Scottish radio station.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 12:04, 29 August 2017 (UTC)
 * on the "The other regions differ more from England than the accents within England among themselves" bit. It is well documented that the dialects of England itself are widely varied, wider than other English-speaking regions.  In general, dialects tend to be more varied in a smaller geography the longer a language has been spoken in a particular geographic area, that's why the most dialect variation in North America happens on the east coast (where English has been spoken the longest in North America) and that's why England has the greatest variety of English Language dialects among all English speaking countries.  Regional accents of English and English language in England has this information this implicitly, this discussion at Quor is more explicit and does an excellent and succinct job of noting that England does have a wider variety of English accents than anywhere else in the world, and explaining why that is so.  This page run by the British Library discusses the bewildering number of distinct dialects, while it covers all of the UK, the variation is clearly greatest across England.  This blog also notes "There is greater variety of dialects in Great Britain because the language developed over a millennium and a half, from a mix of languages spoken by various settlers from elsewhere in Europe."  The notion that English is more homogeneous in England is exactly backwards, England has the LEAST homogeneous language of any major English-speaking nation.  -- Jayron 32 12:27, 29 August 2017 (UTC)
 * I do not need a likbez about English accents, as I'm very well versed in this matter. I've explained myself clearly: there are a certain set of isoglosses that set the accents of England apart from the accents of other regions of the UK, particularly Scotland and Northern Ireland. It is very easy for me to spot a Scotsman just by couple of sentences; and even though I know a Scouser and a Cockney may sound very different, I often fail to spot from which subregion of England an English person comes from: until they speak a very broad accent (like no foot-strut split), all Englishmen sound quite alike for me. But this is not the case in other pairs like English vs Scottish, or English vs Irish, or Scottish vs Irish (I cannot say for sure for Wales as I'm least familiar with it).--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 13:14, 29 August 2017 (UTC)
 * I'm afraid that "for me" is not a reference. One should not speak from a place of authority when the only basis for a claim is based on personal experience.  One should default to what others, especially outside reliable sources from people who have studied these things as professionals, have to say on these matters. That's why everything I noted above was a summary of what others have said on these matters, and referred people to those sources so they could read for themselves what those sources say.  That's what we do here at the reference desk.  Telling others about what we experience, and then expecting that what we have experienced should be understood to be a universal truth, is not the right way at all. -- Jayron 32 15:40, 29 August 2017 (UTC)
 * The certain isoglosses that set the accents of England apart from the others do not depend on my opinion. I believe I've already repeated this three times and I'm not going to do this four times. They simply exist. I shared my experience rather to inform than to prove. Alright, my experience that proves the theory is just a coincidence. Be free to persist on your opinion. But, please, refrain from shaming other contributors, what to do and what not to do, we all do our best. If you think I'm doing it wrong, I'm OK to never edit this page again.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 17:38, 29 August 2017 (UTC)
 * I've never once said you were wrong. Please do not put words in my mouth.  What I said was to request to provide people with references so we can read about what reliable sources have to say on the topic.  You know, like I did.  -- Jayron 32 18:44, 29 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Did you expect from me to provide links to books like Accents of English by J. C. Wells, where he dedicated an independent chapter for England, thus suggesting that the accents of that area have more in common and which make them somewhat distinct from the others? Or things like The Linguistic Atlas of England where you can clearly see the isoglosses? What's the point? I'm neither participating in a serious academic discussion here, nor I'm writing a Wikipedia article to feel obliged to provide sources to every of my words. Consider the accents of England having less in common with each other than with other accent areas, I'm alright with that, as I've already said.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 19:27, 3 September 2017 (UTC)


 * Is a regular Brit anything like a True Scotsman? -- Jayron 32 11:43, 29 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Or indeed, the other... betwixt a painted Britain and a Scot? Martinevans123 (talk) 12:33, 29 August 2017 (UTC)
 * The point is that the Irish, the Scottish and the Welsh have their own languages.  When they speak English their vowels are influenced by their native tongue. 92.8.219.206 (talk) 17:23, 29 August 2017 (UTC)
 * That's a valid point, but it's not the point. See User:Jayron32's useful input above for an outline of what I think is the main point. Martinevans123 (talk) 17:31, 29 August 2017 (UTC)
 * The 'native tongue' influence is usually at some remove, because only a small proportion of people in those nations actually speak those native tongues as their mother tongues, while a larger but still minority proportion speak them at all (Scots Gaelic 1.1%, Irish Gaelic 17.6%, Welsh 19.0%): the majority come from families who have been monoglot English speakers (in terms of their childhood language and accent acquisition) for several generations. Nevertheless, it is interesting how characteristics of the 'native' language persist in the local accents of English. One obvious example is the substitution of 'd' or 't' for 'th' in Irish English, stemming from Irish Gaelic lacking that consonant. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.204.180.96 (talk) 18:17, 29 August 2017 (UTC)
 * If you're talking about native tongues and Scots people you really do need to mention Scots language. DuncanHill (talk) 11:32, 30 August 2017 (UTC)
 * For this we had better to speak about substrates, rather than about native languages. However, explaining every accent feature with the influence of the substrate is a very lazy and often misleading approach.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 19:32, 3 September 2017 (UTC)